I would like to comment on the oped “Musharraf's presidential ambitions” (Nation, Pakistan, August 31, 2007)2 where M. A. Niazi noted: “He has to contest in uniform because of the demands by two institutions...”

I think the [earnest] M. A. Niazi might have missed one super-institution in that equation, the third and the most powerful. Consider the following 'wild' scenario:

It is not about the country or what its lame institutions want (we of course won't mention the ordinary mass of humanity as constituting an 'institution of peoples' having its own aspirations). It is about attack on Iran and what is needed to accomplish that within the requisite timelines available to the hectoring hegemons.

Bush needs to accomplish his dastardly plan for completing this phase of the 'birth pangs of the New Middle East' before his term in office is over, and he needs his partners in monumental crime to maintain the status quo, namely, ensure that no nuclear umbrella is extended from Pakistan to Iran, or SCO to Iran by it transforming itself overnight into a mutual-defense pact treaty ATO (Asian Treaty Organization).

A genuinely elected civilian leader aspiring for a genuinely independent Pakistan, one who might perhaps think of himself as 'amir-ul-momineen' and who wouldn't relent to 5 direct phone calls from the emperor of the world of the time, just might think of doing things his or her own way - the independent and self-reliant way, the way of the peoples which puts the interests and lives of ordinary human beings first. Whether motivated by self-aggrandizement or genuine patriotic aspirations for its peoples – like Chavez of Venezuela – such leadership coming to power can be quite “inimical to imperial mobilization”, especially when it leads a largely fed up populace who has had it up to its neck and is not willing to take it ANYMORE!

As long as the neo-con theology of 'perpetual war' remains in power and obediently led by doltish self-righteous assets like Bush, Mush or another paltoo poodle or poodle-dame and their ten thousand apologists and exponents among the ruling elite are required to be in power in Pakistan, regardless of what color garb and dresses they might wear. Passing the official baton of COAS, President, or Prime Minister makes little difference when policies of 'poodle-states' remain consistent, no differently than changing the front face in the White House makes any difference when their governing world policies are resounding echoes of the realpolitik theme so straightforwardly articulated in the post World War II period by the American State Department's George F. Kennan and dutifully carried forth today on the Grand Chessboard by his legatees, the Neo-cons and Zbigniew Brzezinski:

“We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population .... In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming, and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction .... We should cease to talk about vague and - for the Far East - unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.” (Policy Planning Study 23, 1948)

As some evidence of “deal[ing] in straight power concepts” still being the absolute and unarguable reality today, and that all the great plans of mighty mice and men going awry if such a potent nuclear self-defense pact is afforded to the sitting duck Iran – a proud nation among the oldest and richest continuously inhabited civilizations on the planet – please see this recent detailed analysis “Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East”3, or read its short summary “US preparing 'massive' military attack against Iran”4 which states: “The study concludes that the US has made military preparations to destroy Iran's WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days if not hours of President George W. Bush giving the order.”

The fact that this report is fully consistent with all others which either propose or prognosticate the annihilation of Iran due to its fictitious WMD – analogous to the destruction of Iraq for its fictitious WMD as only certain 'ubermensch white states' are allowed real WMDs, others are prohibited even fictitious ones – is even more ominous. The manifest untempered goal of empire today is to destroy, destroy, destroy, for it is only through destruction that the seeds of 'genesis' is laid in the Straussian world – or so argue the neo-con barbarians ruling the world. None too surprisingly, only the modus operandi is more virulent today and represents only the more overt side of the imperial coin that is facing the top.

The “imperial mobilization” for “full spectrum dominance” is a multifaceted coin that according to the Russian President Putin “means in practice one thing: one center of power, one center of force, one center of decision-making, a world of one master, one sovereign”, and according to the empirical evidence at hand, seeks one single class of ownership for the entire wealth of the world rooted in the virtual world of globalization and free-trade that knows no nationalism or geographic boundaries, and which benefits mainly a tiny class of international ruling elite of the world.

The ideologues du jour riding rough-shod are mainly the more perverse strain of this elitist virus that sees itself destined to effectively takeover the world, one way or another, leaving all the appearances of autonomy behind for administrative purposes. Today it is through kill kill kill only because its particular exponents are entirely sub-human species running on a limited life span. Not to be fooled, they will soon be replaced with a different viral strain from among the social Darwinians – for when absolute power to propagate exists, new mutations eagerly grab the opportunity in a truly bipartisan spirit of hegemony and empire.

Once the bombing and large scale destruction is fait accompli, who becomes president and who wears the uniform in Pakistan and of which fabric becomes considerably less interesting – for it heralds in the potential end to this vicious phase-2 of the 'genesis' of the 'new world order' – and the local Mafioso families can be permitted to haggle out their new territories and redivide the appearances until the next time services need to be rendered to the hectoring hegemons when all arrows will once again need to be realigned for phase-3.

This is exactly similar to what transpired during the interlude of phase-1 and phase-2 when a civilian facade was inefficaciously allowed to emerge in the poodle-state that was only democratic in name despite rapidly changing 'elected' faces. But just as the planning for phase-2 got underway, a strongman became necessary after experiencing how uncontrollable any civilian government can become despite only a thin veneer of democracy camouflaging oligarchic rule in Pakistan's version of the military-feudal-complex such that even 5 phone calls from the mighty President of United States could not dissuade a presumably civilian leader.

Of course all this miraculous alignment of the stars in the unpredictable heavens only transpires by sheer happenstance. It is just serendipity for the hectoring hegemons that we seem to be ruled by military regimes in the first place for most of our existence, and especially whenever the frontline poodle is required to bark, bear its teeth, and bite (only the other underdogs of course), in the service of its master on the 'Grand Chessboard'.

And so shall the 'happenstance' miraculously repeat when phase-3 is ushered in at the opportune time – for only the military oligarchs can presumably make strong unilateral guarantees and offer full compliance to the master's voice under their 'unity of command' while enacting wonderful katputli tamashas to keep the entertainment-starved peoples glued to their televisions and kept busily engaged deciphering which of the multiple lies and red-herrings might be true. A distracting red herring in itself since much of the 'Brahman' ruling elite class of Pakistan has already been bought and paid for. But as in the case of Pakistan's unprecedented nuclear tests, and its inception some three decades earlier, surprises and redemption are always possible when a nationalist civilian oligarch is in power, and that's what makes keeping faithful military 'poodles' nurtured and well fed a safe bet!

That is indeed the first cause enabler of “Military Inc.” in Pakistan – a fact inexplicably absent in the stellar book of the same name which posits it as primarily the by-product of indigenous culture of 'feudalism' that Western powers dutifully exploit!

No Madame defense analyst mon ami, in my far humbler and rather plebeian analysis, it isn't entirely so. Yes we do provide a conducive native soil, but the gardeners are the 'hectoring hegemons' who deliberately plant the 'poodle-state' and its managers and its institutions of various caliber and levels of servitude to cater to a wide range of changing realities on the Grand Chessboard. And they rotate them in power as needed, and dispense with them when they have outlived their usefulness (or grown too big for their shoes). And we the people willingly aid and abet in its execution by refusing to diagnose the disease accurately – often too busy worrying about careers, fame and fortune, prestigious appointments and tenures, accolades from the West, invitations to speak and research in their beltways, and for the vast majority of our wretched humanity, the struggle for daily bread!

It might actually be Pakistan's turn soon enough to receive the next round of 'benevolence' from the neo-con alleyways along the path to the 'new world order' as the pitiful nation and its wretched people sit idly by quibbling over nonsense and superficial issues of 'rule of law' when the laws themselves are constructed only by fiat by the same ruling elite in their own best interests and any discussion of which guardedly remains undebated.

It is a holy taboo to challenge anything ab initio for then it becomes 'fundamentalism' and prime target for 'war of terror'! There has indeed never even been any legitimate public referendum on Pakistan's laws and its Constitution, nor any input ever sought from the governed public on how they wish to be governed or which wars and peace they want to be a part of – some (one-way) 'social contract' that any Mafioso don would be immensely proud of! Thus the same powerful mythology of “war on terror" is conveniently employed by all factions of the ruling elite for their own maximum self-interest even today, just as it was in the aftermath of 911, just as it has always been employed for any conquest since time immemorial. The erstwhile 'no-op' of a politician Imran Khan may be the only one courageously asserting that “war on terror” is not our war, and yet he too, presumably as well read and distinguished as he is, deliberately shies away from calling it a self-perpetuating self-enabling myth for affecting “imperial mobilization” through a “lifetime of wars” – the “World War IV”5, as the former director of CIA put it!

A deliberately misdiagnosed disease can never find an efficacious cure – unless 'Waiting for Allah' has some miraculous potency to it.

The mighty God of the Muslims does claim to be the 'best of Planners' after all. This is what seems to guide the mass of 'faithful' in our land of faith-a-plenty, even to the extent of forgetting that the very same God has also blanketly asserted that He 'does not change the condition of a people unless they strive to change it themselves first' – a tautology at its best for any rational mind that has lost its connection to the spiritual lingua-franca of the respected Prophets of antiquity!

In today's modernity, as in the yesteryear's, the only empirical evidence is the 'law of the jungle' in which the top baboon in suits dictates terms to the weaker ones in 'shalwar kameez' in the pyramid of hierarchical control, always with the sole superpower du jour perched at its apex and always with wet dreams of “full spectrum dominance”! The only difference as far as one can tell is that some wrote and promulgated their “Mein Kampfs”6, while others with perhaps weaker or more primitive intellects, kept it secret and merely surprised one at the door.

Just the explicit warning of dire consequences accruing to Pakistan coming directly from the mighty grandmaster of the 'Grand Chessboard' himself, should be thought of as a blessing of the superiority of the modern 'ubermensch' intellect that makes its pronouncements publicly (see the Foreword of the book “Prisoners of the Cave” for why that might be so), and an immediate cause to think and act for the unfoolish in greater national self-preservation.

Not that no consequences have accrued so far in this nation's long sexagenarian existence as a poodle-client-state, which, some argue, was in fact allowed to come into existence more as a pliable geopolitical pawn against the then emerging scourge of anti-capitalist communism across the world led by the USSR, and the bet, incredibly enough, having been successfully realized within a meager four decades as envisaged by the best thinkers of the then emerging new imperial superpower hell bent on “deal[ing] in straight power concepts” as the cornerstone of its imperial foreign policy. And yet, our ruling elite seems to be entirely obsessed with their petty grab for power, and its mindless bleating continually echoes among our intelligentsia, and almost incoherently in the news media which is entirely unable to see beyond the day's events in any kind of global perspective. In this incredible one of a kind 'vulture-culture' poodle-state we love – the land of the pure planted in an uncongenial soil with the blood of millions and reaping its harvest today – all seem quite oblivious to the mushrooming storm already gathered upon our shores and along the banks just waiting to burst:

' a plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in a "defensive" US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan' (Zbigniew Brzezinski's ominous testimony before the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, Feb 01, 2007)7

It is a remarkable peak of co-optation today that while this monumentally criminal game of hegemony masterfully unfolds before everyone's eyes on the 'Grand Chessboard', and our nation rapidly descends into increasing bipolarity between the “Brahman” and the “Sudra” classes in continuous service as the favorite frontline poodle-state, our intelligentsia and patriots alike willingly prefer to ignore the dancing trumpeting shitting elephant in the newlywed's bed.

“Hegemony is as old as mankind”, and its best practices are achieved through deception, covert-ops, co-optations, and insidiously positioned 'Brown-sahibs' who hear only one master's voice – from NGOs pleading the mantra of civil society to the political parties busily practicing the art of local comeuppance in who can kiss up to the master du jour more amorously.

The brutish and inhuman barbarianism today which puts the Mongol style of conquest to shame, is a far more overt and a rather poor practice of hegemony, and yet our 'patriots' don't seem to wanna notice it. And even when on the rare occasion that they do, most stay content in offering descriptive platitudes instead of taking firm rational positions and advocating shrewd and calculated prescriptive policy shifts to play more equitably on the Grand Chessboard as a combined group of pawns with non-linear power amplification and projection rather than perishing ignominiously in its power-plays of divide and conquer as individual co-opted patsy pawns. So it is little wonder that under best practices of this art of conquest, we remain, as in our entire history, willing client-states – nay, obedient poodle-states.

The lessons of history in the geopolitical landscape of today only teach us one thing in practice: those who do not remove their own tormentors and ruthless oppressors at enormous sacrifice to themselves, have the fiends removed on their behalf at monumental cost to the whole nation, its environment, and the tabula rasa of its peoples. Of course only to be replaced with new fiends to continue the cycle of hegemony.

It is such a shame that in the amazing book "Military Inc.", its erstwhile author, Ayesha Siddiqa, omitted to include the 'poodle-states' and 'hectoring-hegemonic-states' categories into its supposed 'academic' classification of modern nation states - for we seem to be continually wondering from tree to tree in search of meaning and identity without realizing that we have been constructed, aided and abetted, manipulated and torn asunder, entirely to be in the perpetual service of the grand hectoring hegemons!

But do we have to accept this destiny of 'poodle-state' handed us?

Oh where have the realist-idealists men and women of vision and courage vanished? Was Jinnah among the last of its breed? Is there none remaining in this wretched nation in any position of influence who remains un co-opted? It is only the 'full spectrum' deployment of realpolitik that dictates the limits of hegemony, not the reach of F-16s. When will we learn to play it, at least in the legitimate self-defense of our beleaguered peoples?

The lower order animals surely know how to efficaciously play the game of the jungle to survive – a shame that the 'Ashraf-ul-Maklooqat' can't even learn from them (see the popular 8 minute youtube video “Battle at Kruger” National Park South Africa which has been viewed 19 million times as of this writing!)

The lesser of the two evils in the Matrix world is to astutely recognize the realities du jour for what they are on the 'Grand Chessboard' and within the client-state, courageously call a spade a spade - all the way - not just partially, and pay the price to clean the house completely before others decide to do it on our behalf. In Alice's wonderland however, it is all mere katputli tamasha at the miserable wretched of the earth's expense, as alliances with the Queen shouting 'off with the head' are at best, only an ephemeral reprieve. It is anyone's turn next!

So which world is it that we live in – the Matrix or Alice?

We obviously don't live in any consistent reality as noted in the other insightful oped in the Nation of the same edition, by A. H. Khayal, “Let's have two presidents”!

The author, an ordinary researcher and writer on contemporary geopolitics, a minor justice activist, grew up in Pakistan, studied EECS at MIT, engineered for a while in high-tech Silicon Valley (patents here), and retired early to pursue other responsible interests. His maiden 2003 book was rejected by six publishers and can be read on the web at http://PrisonersoftheCave.org. He may be reached at http://Humanbeingsfirst.org.

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